A few years ago, I wrote the words below upon learning that two oxen, named Bill and Lou, who were being utilized in a college program teaching environmental sustainability at Green Mountain College were about to be killed and eaten because they could no longer do the work that the college was using them for. Many students had become fond of them and were upset to learn of the impending killing. After reading may different perspectives on this situation I wrote this piece about it. Unfortunately in spite of the many offers of free sanctuary for them, they were still killed. In light of the recent Kaw Valley Farm Tour, I decided to resurrect what I had written. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ve been pondering the death-row status of Bill and Lou, beloved Oxen that Green Mountain College had been using to pull plows until one became lame. The college now plans to kill both and eat them as part of their “sustainability” project. I have finally found the words to express why their impending execution is so disturbing to me.

Think of the greatest humans…who comes to mind? Not just those with attributes we aspire to have, but those whose most admirable characteristics we’d like to see embodied in more people, knowing that if they were more prevalent, the world would be a much better place? This lens leaves out many celebrated athletes, musicians, and entrepreneurs, but here are several of the first people who pop into my mind — Pete Seeger, Lucretia Mott, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Mahatma Gandhi.

If I had to sum up what one characteristic these individuals share, and which appears to have been what most motivated them to act, it is compassion. Further, it is an expansive compassion – one that compelled them to see beyond the prevalent paradigms of their time/culture and to extend justice to individuals that most of those around them, or else those who held the power did not consider worthy of such justice.

The history of humanity clearly shows that we are making moral/ethical progress, and extending our circle of compassion from my family, my community, my religion, and my race to those whom we had seen as very different. Although human population growth and dwindling resources, may challenge our moral fortitude as never before, we have come a long way! Cannibalism is universally abhorred. Human slavery, although not yet eradicated, is illegal just about everywhere. The equality of women is recognized in more and more places. And most countries prohibit the exploitation of children.

Yet it is still legal and common for almost any animal to be treated in ways that cause them unimaginable agony — even for the most trivial of human desires. We can torture or kill certain animals for no other reason than our own amusement. (fish and animals in circuses) Food animals can be beaten, shocked, deprived of food and water, and confined their entire lives in egregiously small spaces. Highly innervated body parts are routinely removed without anesthetic. Nursing bovine mothers who are clearly as attached to their babies as human mothers are to theirs, have their babies violently taken from them. Like the children of Southern slave-owning whites in the early 1800s, we have grown up accepting these norms, and perhaps even seeing our own comfort and way of life as dependent upon their continuation.

Imagine this: You live next door to an elderly couple who have a friendly dog who the whole neighborhood loves. The dog gets the newspaper for this couple every morning and does other useful things for them as well. But as she has aged, she is going blind and is no longer so useful – but is still in good health and good spirits. Now supposing the couple’s cultural background makes them comfortable with the idea of eating dogs, and they love dog meat – but have been deprived of this pleasure since coming to the US. They have let it be known that they are planning on having their dog humanely killed and butchered so they can eat her. Another family in the neighborhood is begging to have this dog and let her live out her life with them, well cared for, but this couple refuses, saying they are really looking forward to eating “dog” after having not had any in so long – and further they have been feeding her a special diet, planning that eventually she would be consumed. How would you feel about this? How would feel about the possibility that others in your neighborhood, might even say, “Well it IS just a dog…and I’d like to see what it tastes like too.” How would you feel at the thought that such practices might grow to be more widely accepted? Would it bother you if others on your street started eating and raising dogs for meat? What if people started thinking this was ok for cats too? Would you consider such changes to be good for society? What if your own children suddenly told you that they’d like to see what their beloved cat or dog tasted like, and had no qualms with he or she being killed – as long as it was quick and relatively pain free, in order to have this experience of eating them?

If you are like most people, just thinking about this is very disturbing, I challenge you to consider why? I believe it is because in our heart of hearts, we know that cats and dogs are self-aware beings, like us, who also want to live. We recognize that there is something dark about a person who could form a relationship with an animal, and then disregard that and harm them. If you don’t find the scenario disturbing, it is likely that you are someone who has already been enculturated to be numb to this sort of thing –probably by being raised on a farm.

In the highly acclaimed book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author describes how prior to the legal requirement of “informed consent”, hospitals would experiment on patients without their knowledge. At one hospital where doctors were instructed to inject cancer cells into unknowing patients, all but three doctors (who just happened to be Jewish) complied. But the Jewish Docs argued that the Nuremberg Convention prohibited this. They were widely ridiculed by their colleagues who dismissed their perspective because they were Jews and the Holocaust had just happened and they were seen as overly sentimental. Looking back, most of us today are shocked that so many educated, thoughtful people could have failed to appreciate the perspective of the three Jewish doctors. So we should ask ourselves, what injustices are we blind to right now, that in the future will be seen by most as so obviously wrong?

Every day in America, millions of sentient creatures are killed after living lives with far more suffering then Bill and Lou have endured. In terms of what it means for us humans, I am especially concerned about Bill and Lou’s fate. If they get slaughtered, in spite of people who care about them pleading to take them to a sanctuary, it will be akin to the beloved neighborhood dog being killed to be eaten. Only the collateral damage won’t be the dimming of compassion in just the neighborhood children, but will potentially infect a great many more people, because of these animal’s notoriety.

I want Bill and Lou to be saved, not just because I believe they want to live as much as any of us, but also because doing so is most consistent with our human kind’s highest ideals and is one more step in the direction of creating a more just and compassionate world for all of us. As humanity grapples with population and environmental challenges, one thing is clear – We need more of our population to be people whose hearts are open, and who are not numb to injustices that others may have learned to ignore. Compassion is the basis of morality and we all benefit from practices that bring it more and more to fruition.

.The idea for this post started when I read this news story about retired (vegan) heart surgeon Dr. Ellsworth Wareham. He retired from surgery at age 95. And THAT was five years ago! I had actually never even heard of him before I saw this story, but it got me thinking. I know of so many older long-term vegans, and what really stands out to me, is not just their age, but their VIBRANCY! At every age, these people stand out as highly functional --both physically and mentally. AND they stand as clear examples of what is possible for people when they choose a lifestyle based upon social justice, compassion and making the world a better place -- and oh -- also as evidence that yes in fact you can live just fine without running animal protein through your digestive system.

Physician extraordinaire Dr. Michael Klaper, who back in the early 1990s, was the only one writing books for vegan parents. His classic, Children, Pregnancy and the Vegan Diet has been out of print a LONG time, but some copies are selling for hundreds of dollars -- and worth every penny I might add, as I am grateful to that book for empowering me to raise my children vegan, when there was very little information available on the topic.

Helen and Scott Nearing the authors of many books, including, the seminal, Living the Good Life, lived completely self sufficiently, in a home they built from stone with their own hands while in their 60s and 80s. Scott died at the age of 100, While Helen 20 years younger lived on alone for another decade until a car accident ended her life prematurely. She was a lifelong vegetarian, he adopted the diet as a young man. Together they evolved to vegan in their later years. They were remarkable people. The home they built together is now a museum.

Judy and Michael Carman who are in their 70s have been vegan for over 20 years. They are such inspiring examples of living fully, healthfully and with intention. Judy is the author of several books, including Peace to all Beings and The Missing Peace. Although this picture is a bit old now -- (it's all I could find online) this is pretty much what they look like now too.

But my point in listing all these people, is not to suggest that being vegan will guarantee living to a ripe old age, but rather to show that it is possible to eat plant based and survive into the later years, and with an exceptionally great quality of life. It's not just how old they are, but rather how functional, physically and cognitively they are, at ages when that is not at all the norm in our culture.

Update -- Some months after I wrote this article, it was "discovered" by small local farmers who were upset with what I wrote and lobbied our local natural foods coop, The Lawrence Community Mercantile to fire me from teaching cooking classes there, and I have since lost that job. You can read more about what happenedHere.

Troubled by the way animals are treated on CAFO’s and other industrial animal farms? Looking for local meat or local dairy in the Lawrence Kansas, Kansas City or Topeka area? Then you may really appreciate reading about some of the small local farms I visited on the Kaw Valley Farm Tour. Judy Carman also went on this tour and wrote about it here.-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was extremely impressed by the warmth and sincerity of the farmers that I met. I found their children to be engaging, healthy-looking and excited ambassadors for their family's lifestyle, and I even found myself longing a bit to have been able to give my own children the sense of local belonging and community that these families have been able to provide to their children as a result of there being so many other families nearby who share their values and a lifestyle built around the raising and using of animals. However, behind the happy human smiles, and their emphasis upon eating a diet based upon meat and dairy (which have egregious environmental footprints and would require more land than our planet even has, if all 7 billion humans now living on this earth tried to eat the diet that these farm families are teaching their children to eat) there were other unhappy realities, that unfortunately, as far as I could tell, most of the other visitors were oblivious to.

I first heard of the Vesecky farm, when an employee of a store selling Vesecky turkeys at Thanksgiving last year praised this farm by telling me that they had visited the place and "Vesecky farm IS social justice for turkeys." So I was very curious to know what my own impressions would be. Mr.Vesecky embodied the stereotype of the salt-of-the-earth farmer of yesteryear. His quiet, unassuming but friendly manner was welcoming and he seemed genuinely happy to show off his operation. The turkeys looked healthy and were extremely curious about all of us strangers who had descended upon their farm -- but were not nearly as trusting of any of us as they were of Mr. Vesecky -- the man who fed them (and unbeknownst to them was planning their mass slaughter for next month, a disturbing and surreal fact amidst the seemingly wholesome and happy backdrop of visitors enjoying the event.) I asked Mr. Vesecky if he ever got attached to the birds or missed them when they were trucked off to slaughter, and he replied quite matter-of -factly, "Nope that's when I get paid!" Mr. Vesecky told me that he did not breed any of the birds himself but instead purchased them from a commercial hatchery. He said they arrived as newly hatched chicks via the US postal service (meaning no food, water, nor warmth for the few days they were in transit.) "Do they all arrive alive I asked?" and he said, "Mostly." Few people who claim to eat only "humane meat" are aware of the violent repeated forced artificial insemination (rape) of female turkeys, that is essential to all turkey hatcheries (call them as I did-- and they will tell you the birds are simply too large to mate on their own without hurting each other) Mr. Vesecky pays companies to inflict this trauma on grown turkeys so that he can purchase turkey chicks to sell them for a premium price to people who want to believe they are buying a "humane" product. (and of course this also means that male turkeys have their sperm forcibly removed from them via equally barbaric procedures too. But of course by having these parts of the farming done at other locations and out of sight of visitors "coming to see where their food comes from" it allows this fraud to continue and to be thought of as humane by unsuspecting folks who want to believe that their purchases are promoting humane practices. It was disheartening for me to realize that educated caring people working in retail outlets would refer to this whole scenario as, "Social justice for turkeys."

By far the most disturbing farm I visited was the Iwig Dairy. They provided visitors a formal guided tour of their operation. We were shown the bottle washer, the milk separator, pasteurizer, homogenizer, freezer and ice cream maker. But when we came to the milking barn, we were told it was not really set up for people to go inside. So I asked if I might just look in the window at it and they said the milking part was far in another area and I wouldn’t be able to see anything. In light of the fact that they admitted doing gruesome bodily mutilations to unanesthetized cows, and how they seemed oblivious to the profound psychological distress they routinely subjected mother cows and their babies to, not allowing us to actually enter the milking barn (THE part of a dairy operation that the public most associates with where their milk comes from) it left my imagination to conjure up barbaric and cruel possibilities as the reason we were not allowed in to see it (because what they did unabashedly share – suggested they were quite desensitized to things that most people would consider egregiously violent, unjust and traumatic for animals -- as long as they had not grown up on such a farm and been taught that these things were in fact completely ok to do to animals -- and of course absolutely necessary if one was to be profitable.)

The Iwig farmers told us that all bovines have horns and that these must be removed for safety reasons. Since it is well established that cow horns are well innervated and removing them is a deeply painful process, I asked if they anesthetized their cows before subjecting them to this. They did not, but did point out that, when possible, they preferred to do so right at birth because it was less traumatic. “How so?” I querried, and they compared it to human circumcision – much less painful if done at birth – but then admitted, that they also frequently do it at a much later time as well – and pointed to some cows that got it done around 9 months, but again emphasized it was not that big of a deal. (Leaving me to think that the only ones that doing it at birth is “less painful for” are the humans carrying out this barbaric procedure.)

When I asked why the babies must be removed from the mothers at only one day old – I was told it was driven by economics – the mothers simply wouldn’t produce as much milk without being hooked up to a milk machine early on, although they never explained why this couldn’t be done AFTER allowing the babies to suckle several times each day – but I suspect that would require more time/inconvenience than they were willing to invest – after all – legally (and psychologically to the farmers) cows are only property/business assets, not living beings with feelings, who suffer excruciatingly in the process of humans exploiting them, for completely unnecessary reasons. They had justifications for what they did, and savvily used my questions as a segue to point out that cows are each very individual – and some are completely uninterested in being mothers at all and actually abandon their babies – thus they reasoned, there is nothing wrong with stealing day old nursing babies from their mothers. (Hmmm....could the trauma of having been removed from their own mothers at young ages and never having experienced "mother's love" themselves have anything to do with this?) I silently gave thanks for the fact, that I was born into a time/place/member-of-a-species where more powerful entities didn’t use the fact that some mothers of my species abandon their babies as justification for not allowing me to nurse and mother my own. (Article continues after the Peaceful Prairie Flyer, "Milk Comes from a Grieving Mother.")

Another farm I visited was that of Amy's meats. Amy is a soft spoken, attractive, home schooling mother of three. I found her very likeable and noticed as she spoke of her children and educational philosophy how much we had in common. She obviously loves being around animals and does care about how animals are treated, and talks to her children about this issue as well, so I was surprised when she told me that their family will eat any meat and dairy that is served to them -- even from CAFOs, and that she has told her children it's ok -- because even though it's coming from unhappy animals, at least it's going into their "happy belies." I asked her about how she dealt with the killing part of raising animals for food and having her children involved in that -- does it upset them? She said that she has taught them, it's ok because, "We give to them (by taking care of them) and then they give their meat, babies and milk to us," and I wondered how many of the people whom she gave this line of reasoning to over the years ever stopped to consider how the word, "give" was being perverted when used in this way -- kind of like saying that the Native Americans "gave us" the land we now call the United States. In both cases violence and loss of life are being forced upon the vulnerable by those who hold the power. That is not "giving." Yet this is but one more example of how, "Desensitization to injustice," gets passed down from one generation to the next. This really gets to the crux of why the small local farm movement is actually counter to progress and the continued evolution of ethics and morality. If getting to know the animals who are the source of one's meat, dairy or eggs does not awaken a person's sense of moral outrage at the injustice, exploitation and abuse that is forced upon other beings simply for the frivolous reason that someone enjoys the taste, then it is because it is playing into the larger paradigm of culturally taught desensitization to injustice....which is exactly the reason why things like slavery, child labor, patriarchy, and discrimination based upon sexuality, to name just a few examples were enabled to continue for so long.

Earlier this week, I was one of three people invited to sit on a panel, at an event at Johnson County Community College to answer audience questions following a showing of the movie PlanEAT. After the movie, and in response to an audience question, the dietitian on the panel told the audience that B-12 was not made by plants, and that only animals made it and this to her was evidence that a totally plant-based diet was not natural. Although she did state that she thought most people would benefit from eating less animal foods, she also believed that we should still eat a bit of meat and dairy -- and that our need for B-12 was evidence of this.

As I stated at the event, B12 is actually not made by plants or animals, but rather by bacteria. When animals eat plants with soil still adhering, they may consume some B-12 containing bacteria. When they drink from water containing bacteria, they may also obtain B12. Animals eating unhygienically can thus concentrate B-12 in their bodies -- and this is the source of B-12 in animal products. Humans long ago likely obtained B-12 like this too -- prior to our chlorinating water, and attempting to thoroughly clean all our vegetables.

As we age, there are many things that can diminish our ability to obtain B-12 from food -- including, reduced stomach acid, leaky gut, and some autoimmune diseases, but taking B-12 as a sublingual (under the tongue) can bypass these absorption problems. Because a B-12 deficiency puts us at greater risk of dementia and other neurological problems and cardiovascular events, without any other obvious symptoms, this is something we want to make sure we are adequately supplied with. the Institute of Medicine actually recommends that ALL PEOPLE OVER THE AGE OF 50 supplement B-12 -- so its not just those on plant-based diets that need to pay attention to B-12.